Denver D-Day veterans recall their date with history 70 years later

On a gray, blustery morning 70 years ago, Gerald "Dee" Webb sat behind the wheel of his idling 2½-ton truck, steeling himself for the longest drive of his life.

The distance was mere yards, about as far as a baseball can be tossed.

But Webb's destination was Omaha Beach on D-Day, where German defenders had just decimated the first wave of American troops landing in France — the launch of the Normandy invasion during World War II to liberate Europe.

Perched on the heaving deck of a landing craft in the English Channel, Webb saw corpses in the water and heard the boom of artillery and shrieks of the wounded and dying.

World War II veteran Jack Wayman, 92, shows some of his military decorations at his home in Boulder on Wednesday. The medals are, from left, the Purple Heart, French Legion of Honor, another Purple Heart and the Air Medal. Wayman landed in Normandy and fought 313 days across Europe. "I was just a young kid," he said. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

"There was nothing for me to do but go, and I wound up to my neck in water, and suddenly I was underwater because I had hit a bomb crater," Webb recalled at his home in Ovid, a town of 330 people tucked in Colorado's far northeastern corner.

"I half-blacked out, but stood up and kept driving," said Webb, who is now tethered to an oxygen line. "The truck was kind of bobbing along, but I made it. If I wasn't in the second wave on Omaha instead of the first, I wouldn't be here."

At 91, Webb is part of a fast-dwindling cohort of veterans — Coloradans among them — who served in the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion and subsequent campaign through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.

The beachheads — Omaha and Utah for the U.S. Army; Sword, Juno and Gold for the British and Commonwealth troops — are names that have passed into legend, commemorated in history books, novels and movies.

Webb was a mechanic with the 996th Engineers Treadway Bridge Company, a unit sent to wherever river-spanning pontoon bridges were needed to ferry troops, trucks and tanks.

The Oklahoma native spent months training in England for the invasion. He personally waterproofed his truck's engine so it could survive the surf.

A landing craft approaches Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. These U.S. Army infantrymen were among the first to attack the German defenses. (Getty Images file)

"We knew we were training for something, but it wasn't until the morning before that we found out where we were going," he said. "We were heading for Dog Red sector on Omaha Beach. I went in with a carbine and this awful, heavy suit that had been impregnated against a poison gas attack we were told might happen."

A successful invasion of Fortress Europe was no sure thing.

France fell in 1940, and the Germans had spent four years building artillery blockhouses, tank traps and machine-gun emplacements that zeroed in on the exposed beaches. Beyond that, the Allies had to factor in weather, tides and a favorable moon.

Hours before ordering the launch of Operation Overlord, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the European Theater, penned a note taking full responsibility for failure should the Germans push the landing force back into the sea.

It was a combined ground, sea and air operation that landed 156,000 Allied troops on D-Day. Thousands more arrived in the days and weeks that followed.

————

Wayne Best of Federal Heights was a chief petty officer aboard the USS Cowie on D-Day. The destroyer was on picket duty in the English Channel, patrolling for enemy planes and U-boats amid the thousands of Allied invasion vessels.

As fire control officer, Best, 92, was in charge of the forward 5-inch guns and, as needed, manned a battery of "quads," 40-millimeter anti-aircraft guns.

"It was a scary thing," he said. "We could see the shells from the battleships and cruisers going over us. You didn't know if a U-boat would pop up or someone would drop a bomb on you.

"The water was just loaded with guys who were dead."

Best, a Nebraska native who worked in auto and RV sales after the war, recalls the mystery surrounding the invasion — and the fear that soldiers and sailors tried to overcome.

"We knew we were going, but I don't know that we thought it was going to be that big," he said. "There was a whole bunch of guys crying, I'll tell you. That happens."

Jack Wayman landed in Normandy on June 13 with the U.S. Army's 30th "Old Hickory" Division, in time to qualify for a D-Day ribbon. He fought 313 days across Europe until his unit reached Berlin.

Wayman returned from the war with a set of captain's bars and a Combat Infantryman Badge. Among his decorations: a Silver Star, Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

Bits of shrapnel now and again still work their way out of his right arm.

"I was just a young kid," said Wayman, 92, the retired founder of the Consumer Electronics Association trade group who lives in Boulder. "You think getting killed isn't going to happen to you, and we joked about the 'million-dollar wound' that would get you sent home."

Wayman's wounds only got him patched up and sent back to fighting through Normandy's hedgerows, the tall, infernally thick windbreaks that farmers had planted centuries earlier.

"It took us a couple of months to take Normandy," said Wayman, who still has the binoculars he used as a forward artillery observer. "You would take a hedgerow one day, lose it the next day."

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The sense of unending conflict was palpable.

"No relief, no rest," Wayman said. "Not if you were at the front. You just knew you weren't going home."

But he did, sailing back to New York on the RMS Queen Mary, the luxury liner that spent the war years as a troop ship. He arrived to hear that something called an atomic bomb had just detonated over Hiroshima.

Like Wayman and other combat vets, Webb, who was pinned behind a bulldozer blade on Omaha Beach before working his way inland at midday, talked of choking down fear.

"Due to the horror of what was happening, some guys went crazy on the spot," he said. "I had tunnel vision, almost a blackout of everything except what was happening right in front of me. There was so much noise and explosions. You're scared to death. You can't take it all in and can hardly breathe. It was a horrible, horrible thing.

"I don't remember being afraid of getting shot or killed," said Webb, who later earned a Purple Heart. "You just took that for granted."

Some of his memories are nearly surreal.

"It's so strange, but one thing that's stuck with me is passing by this beautiful cottage right after I got off the beach," Webb said. "It had a pretty picket fence with tomatoes growing in front of it. We'd been living on K-rations, and we stuffed ourselves and our packs with tomatoes."

Walter Ruckman of Denver was 19 when he came ashore on Utah Beach with the First Army. He returned in 1994 with other D-Day vets for the 50th anniversary.

"It's been 70 years but doesn't seem that long," said the Harvey Park resident. "We had a job to do and did it. I'm just lucky I made it back.

"A lot of guys I shipped out with didn't."

The D-Day anniversary has particular resonance for subsequent generations of war veterans.

Denver resident Kevin Dennehy, a retired Army National Guard colonel who saw combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, is in Normandy this week for ceremonies with the Army's 29th Division Association. The division was in the first wave on Omaha Beach.

"It's a time to reflect on their sacrifices and how they changed the way we live today," said Dennehy, who co-authored "The D-Day Assault," a guidebook. "When these last handful of veterans pass away, who will keep the memory of what they did there alive if we don't?"

William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/williamporterdp

D-Day commemorated on TV

Jeremy Hubbard of Denver's Fox31 is in Europe with a group of Colorado veterans reporting from Normandy on the 70th anniversary of D-Day. He made a similar trip with a group of veterans to Pearl Harbor last December. He will host a 30-minute special airing at 9:30 p.m. Friday and Sunday on Fox31.

NBC News will have Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and others in Normandy covering the official remembrance. A special report airing locally at 7 p.m. Friday on Channel 9, will tell the stories of four WWII veterans who make an emotional return there.

On "D-Day Sacrifice," National Geographic Channel uses digitally remastered and colorized archival footage plus interviews to tell the story of the turning point of WWII. Two-parter premiered June 4 and repeats through the month.

HBO will replay the 2001 "Band of Brothers" miniseries, based on Stephen E. Ambrose's book, the story of Easy Company, the elite U.S. Army division which parachuted into France, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and captured Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgtaden.

— Joanne Ostrow

Events in Denver

Commemorative events are scheduled in metro Denver to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

On Friday, John S. Stewart of VFW Post No. 1 will hold a flag-raising ceremony, along with public speakers, at the Molly Brown House Museum (1340 Pennsylvania St.) from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Information: 303-832-4092 or mollybrown.org.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science (2001 Colorado Blvd.,) will have 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. screenings of "D-Day: Normandy 1944," a new IMAX 3-D film narrated by Tom Brokaw. Information: 303-322-7009 or dmns.org.

— William Porter, The Denver Post

World War II veteran Gerald "Dee" Webb is pictured at his home in Ovid on Tuesday. Webb, 91, reflects on the 70th anniversary of the famous invasion of Omaha Beach in Normandy during World War II. He was part of the second wave of Army soldiers to arrive on the beach on June 6, 1944, and drove his truck off the landing craft into 6 feet of water. "The truck was kind of bobbing along, but I made it," he said. "If I wasn't in the second wave on Omaha instead of the first, I wouldn't be here." Webb, above, spent 365 days on the front lines. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

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